Ride Along with Hank and Adalind
by midnightjen
Summary: Being stuck in the car with Adalind seemed like a great time to clear the air between them. Takes place after 9 Tails of Seduction.
**a/n:** A gift (bribe) for thinktink2. It's not at all what we were talking about but it wanted to be written. This is a companion piece to 4 Months and takes place after ( Tails entirely from Hank's POV. I'd love to hear those thoughts on this random little one-shot.

 **Ride Along with Hank and Adalind**

He wasn't sure how exactly he'd come to be riding around with Adalind searching all over Portland for an amnesiac eisbiber but he chalked it up to the way his life was going these days that he almost considered this turn of events normal. Driving with Adalind wasn't the weirdest thing he'd had to do, wasn't actually the weirdest thing he'd had to do all day and so really, it wasn't like he could complain.

It was just incredibly awkward and he wished like hell it was Nick riding shotgun like it normally was and not the woman his partner was planning to marry. You know, the one who'd once tried to kill him after sleeping with him and leaving him for dead in her bed.

Well, thoughts like that would only make this job harder.

How was it his life had turned out like this? He'd blame Nick if he thought it would do any good but he thought the fact that he kind of liked all of the wesen weirdness in his life might undermine the strength of his argument. He'd had to come to a whole different way of thinking to deal with the things he'd seen and done so why shouldn't he be driving around Portland working a case with his sort of ex riding shot gun while her soon to be fiancé who happened to be his partner tried to get the perp to talk enough to give them some idea of what the hell she'd done to the poor eisbiber that had him running around Portland not knowing who or what he was and generally scaring the hell out of strangers. And probably himself.

'Do you realise how loudly you're thinking?' Adalind asked conversationally. 'I can actually hear the wheels turning as you justify being okay with my being here.'

'Isn't this weird for you?' Hank asked. 'Cause it's weird for me.'

Adalind shrugged, gaze pointed out the window looking far too comfortable confined to such a small space with someone she'd once tried to kill.

Actually she shared a bed with Nick and they'd tried to kill each other multiple times. Man, how did that even work? No, he wasn't going to think about it. Bad enough he had some idea of her moves between the sheets, he didn't need to be thinking how Nick and Adalind had come to be in a relationship, let alone the mechanics of their sex life. The thought alone made him want to vomit.

He didn't think that would go down well in the car. He'd adjusted to life and work involving wesen but he wasn't quite ready to accept Nick and Adalind as a happy couple thinking about marriage and the future. He couldn't shake the feeling that Juliette would walk back into their lives and bring everything tumbling down again. He didn't like the feeling and he sure as hell wasn't sure he wanted that to happen but he got the feeling Juliette wasn't done with them. It wasn't a nice feeling and he felt a bit traitorous thinking it (mostly because of all the things she'd done as a hexenbiest) but Nick had loved her for a long time and it felt like he was just settling with Adalind. That he was taking the fact that he and Adalind had a kid and were forced to share the same loft as a reason to get married.

He'd been married enough times before to know what a flimsy foundation for a marriage that was. Just because he'd seen the way they could work together and how willing Adalind was to help didn't mean he wasn't worried things were moving too fast and it was all going to blow up in their faces.

Which, granted, was kind of selfish given he was worried about how it would affect him and the rest of Nick's friends but there was legitimate concern that Adalind return to her old ways if Nick broke up with her. Adalind wasn't exactly the kind of woman to go down quietly and she'd already proven herself more than capable of murder.

'Everything in my life is kind of weird,' Adalind pointed out. 'After a while you just learn to go with it.'

He conceded she might have a point but that didn't settle things for him. Working with her on the Kitsune case had been easier because he didn't have to interact with her. It had not prepared him for this. Why couldn't Rosalee have done it? What about Monroe? He knew some stuff about antidotes and things. Why did it have to be Adalind?

'Is that all your relationship with Nick is?' Hank asked. 'Is that you just going with it?' Apparently he was going to ask awkward questions to cover the awkward silence. How that was supposed to be a solid plan he would never know. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what her reasoning behind her relationship with Nick was. Knowing his partner fancied them in love was bad enough. He'd seen Nick in love, he'd been head over heels for Juliette already when they'd met, but it had never looked like this.

Hank wasn't sure he'd ever seen Nick like this before. Nick on Adalind was scary, angry and well, he wished he could say passionate but that didn't feel dark enough. Months ago, when Adalind had been taken by Black Claw to distract Nick (which had really worked because they still had no idea what Black Claw had smuggled into the country) he hadn't recognised the man Nick had been.

Monroe said that was what Grimms were like, dark, intense, deadly. But Hank had been around the whole time Nick had been a Grimm and he'd never seen the man like that before. Intense didn't begin to cover it.

Adalind sighed tiredly. He may not have wanted to be in the car but she had a son to get back to. 'Do you really want to have this conversation now?'

'I think we need to.' He was pretty sure Adalind didn't need to have this conversation one way or the other, she'd gained (earned?) her acceptance from Monroe and Rosalee, he doubted she much cared about his.

'I'm not going to justify my relationship with Nick to you,' she said curtly. 'It's none of your business.' He started to tell her that it was in fact the complete opposite but she continued on before he could. 'That doesn't mean I don't get why you want to know. I love Nick. I didn't plan it, I didn't want it, it just happened. I know it's not something you'll find easy to believe but Nick and I have always had chemistry, we were just using the passion that came from it to kill each other instead of tear each other's clothes off.'

He pulled a face at that, he really didn't care for the reminder of their sex life. He'd gotten enough of a glimpse at it during the Kitsune case. Being scarred for life was just a feature of that whole case apparently. He didn't remember any crazy one night stands but he sure as hell would be paying closer attention to any he had in the future. He didn't like the idea of some wesen sperm jacking him and never letting him see his kid.

And that gave him weird thoughts about Kelly that he hoped the kid never learned. Jesus, Hank could just imagine how that conversation might go. Every kid asks the question eventually right? Was I planned? Should it ever happen he would love to get a front row seat to see how the hell Nick and Adalind explained that one.

He wondered what they'd even tell Kelly about their past, about how they met. No parents should be ashamed to tell their kid how they met but it wasn't like Nick and Adalind had a lame one-night stand bathroom-stall screw to explain away. They had full on disguised as your father's girlfriend hate sex instead.

The idea made him shudder.

'I'm really not sure that's true,' he told Adalind trying to stick with the conversation and not get distracted by twisted thoughts.

'Go left here,' she told him, then she shrugged. 'You're the one who caught Nick checking me out.'

'You remember that?' Hank was surprised.

'Well, about a second after he got done scoping me I woged and we scared the hell out of each other which kind of ruined the moment, but I have it on pretty good authority that Nick has always found me very attractive.'

'Adalind, no straight man would ever think otherwise,' Hank pointed out before ruining what could have been a compliment with, 'It's when they see what's inside that they run away.'

She rolled her eyes at him. 'Nick likes my insides.'

'Once upon a time he'd have preferred them spilling on the floor,' Hank pointed out.

Adalind waved his comment aside carelessly. 'We were clearly both young and stupid.'

'It was a year ago!'

'I hate to break it to you, Hank, but Nick and – and I will freely admit to this – I have a long history of being stupid when it comes to each other. I absolutely believe had we had sex back when we first met things would have been completely different.'

Hank masterfully resisted the urge to vomit right there in the car but it was a close thing. He glanced over at her and saw the little smile tugging at her lips. He narrowed his eyes at her. Was she playing him? Was she deliberately messing with his head. She turned to meet his gaze and smiled cheekily.

'You're messing with me.'

She shrugged. 'It's easy to do. Really Hank, do you think Nick and I have any idea how we got here? It's not like we woke up one day and thought "you know what I'm tired of hating you, let's fuck instead".'

Hank winced, that was kind of how he imagined things had gone down. Once he and Nick had partnered up he'd gotten an up close look at his relationship with Juliette, hearing about all of the milestones, the fights (not nearly as many as there were once wesen became involved) and the good bits in between. He hadn't heard a thing about this relationship brewing with Adalind until BAM! Nick was buying a ring and shit was getting real.

He'd suspected they were a thing back when Adalind had been kidnapped. Nick feeling guilty about not having photos of Adalind on his phone would have been clue enough without the Grimm style rampage of anger and destruction (read torture) but there'd been no real lead up. Nothing that had screamed date more than it had said time with Kelly. All of the signs might have been there but without flashing neon lights Hank had been hesitant to believe them. Because it was Adalind they were talking about. Adalind who had been the cause behind Juliette's transformation. The one who'd kicked off all of the bad events that had resulted in Juliette turning on all of them and Nick's mom dying.

Hank just didn't think Adalind was good enough in bed to warrant the forgiveness and he knew Nick wasn't the kind of man to let a woman screw him into a relationship – literally and figuratively in this case. Not that he really had much to go on either. He'd done a pretty damn good job of forgetting what it was like to have sex with her, it was the only way he could look at her and Nick together and not get that urge to crawl away and hide.

'I'm regretting starting this conversation,' Hank informed her.

'My work here is done.'

This time he rolled his eyes. 'I just wanted a genuine understanding of what this is because I don't get it and Nick is no help.'

'Pretty sure that's because Nick doesn't get it either,' Adalind told him, not taking her eyes off the street now that they'd reached the area where the eisbiber had last been seen. 'It just happened. I like the Nick I get to see and he clearly likes the Adalind I've become so what's the problem?'

'I can't shake the feeling it's all going to blow up in our faces.'

This time Adalind turned to look at him. 'I love Nick,' she said seriously. 'Don't you think maybe the problem isn't with me and Nick but with you?'

That had occurred to Hank when he saw everyone else acting like there was nothing wrong with what was happening between the two but that didn't mean he didn't think there was more going on than his general dislike of Adalind colouring everything.

Because he didn't dislike her which was probably part of the problem. He wanted to hate her, wanted to think this thing brewing between her and Nick was wrong but the truth was when he didn't focus on everything he thought was going to go wrong, he actually kind of liked her. And that was all kinds of wrong.

Why did it feel like he was the only one still loyal to Juliette? Was that what this was? It didn't feel like loyalty, mostly it felt like suspicion and a healthy dose of paranoia. He was a cop though, suspicion and paranoia kind of came with the life of a detective. Usually he could block them out but this time, this time, it just struck him as weird. As wrong. As absolutely, 100% likely to blow up in their faces.

And yeah, that was probably all on him but he was trying to make sense of something that didn't make sense at all and maybe looking at this through the eyes of a cynic was about the only way to cope with the changes going on lately.

Or maybe he was just looking for excuses. Maybe he was just trying to find a way to justify it all to himself so he didn't feel guilty for starting to view Adalind as a friend. He didn't spend much time with her and they'd never be catch a movie or share a drink friends but he was comfortable enough to be friendly in that "my partner's in love with you" kind of way that all friends eventually have to develop.

He felt like he was thinking himself in circles. 'Maybe it is me,' he admitted. 'Doesn't mean I'm wrong thinking the way I am.'

'It does if it hurts Nick,' Adalind reasoned. 'You don't have to like me or trust me Hank, I haven't exactly treated you well in the past, but you're supposed to trust Nick. Trust his judgement on this. It's our life, not yours.'

'Everything you two do affects us.'

Adalind shrugged again. 'Only if you let it.'

It seemed so simple when she put it like that but it didn't feel simple. It didn't feel like a matter of adjusting his thinking and telling himself it was all going to be a different way now. He supposed the hardest thing was that as much as he'd learned to roll with the weirdness of life working beside a Grimm, he hadn't quite learned to just shake it off and go with it all. That's how he saw it, was why it worried him so much. It looked like Nick had simply gotten up from the last beating the universe had handed him, dusted off the one piece of his shattered heart he could find and gift wrapped it for Adalind.

That made no sense to him. It went so far beyond rolling with the wesen punches.

'Hey, look, there's our amnesiac eisbiber. Pull over and I'll dose him.'

Apparently, the conversation was over. Hank pulled over and Adalind was out of the car before he'd even thought about his next move. Twenty seconds later she'd managed to calm the confused eisbiber, dose him and was calling Hank over to help her stuff him in the backseat.

Later, while reflecting on the whole case – and his time with Adalind – Hank concluded it was her scary efficiency in moments like that which worried him the most. He worried that one day she would no longer have a reason to be nice, to curb her violent impulses, the ones he'd read came with being a hexenbiest.

He didn't trust her, maybe he was starting to like her, but he could never let his guard down when he knew what she was capable of. He didn't know how Nick did it but whenever he thought about Adalind he only remembered the time she tried to kill him and how she'd dosed him with love cookies.

It was going to take a lot more than help on a few wesen cases and Kelly to make Hank see Adalind in a new light.

Perhaps the worst thing was that he knew he'd try. He'd try to overlook her trying to kill him, he'd try to overlook all of the bad because, scary Grimm rage and weird mood swings aside, Adalind made Nick happy. She made him smile and he'd be a shit friend and a terrible partner if he denied Nick a chance at happiness. Even if he didn't like it or understand it.

Things had been so much simply when everything was black and white and the bad guys stayed bad. He hated it that Adalind's apparent conversion to good made him question all of her actions and her motives before. He was only vaguely aware of what happened that first year after Nick became a Grimm, only that Renard had been responsible for a lot of the attempts on Nick's life and his aunt's. Now, whenever Nick talked about it, there was a lot more talk about Renard and the things he'd done than Adalind. Hank got the feeling there were things he didn't know, things that Nick had only recently learned.

He didn't like to think how those things might influence how he felt now. One of them needed to keep a clear head and it definitely wasn't going to be Nick. He just hoped it didn't cost him his partnership or his friendship with Nick. He just hoped he was right to be wary.

Weddings were a big deal. Marriage was a big deal. He had good authority on that, despite his poor judgement and questionable history as a husband. There had to be a reason he kept trying, right?

'Wow,' Adalind murmured. 'You're still thinking about it.'

Hank sighed heavily. 'I'm justifying my actions.'

'How's that going for you.'

'Not well.'

'Then my work here is definitely done.'

Unfortunately, he had no argument for that.


End file.
